


Decoration

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Fracture and Repair [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Banter, Christmas, Complicated Relationships, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 10:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16871323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “You haven’t any decorations,” Severus says.“Oh, that,” Potter says, unenthused. “Well, I just don’t. You know, it’s not like I have anybody over here at Christmas - we all go to the Weasleys’. You go to the Malfoys’, right?”“Not of my own volition.” Potter presses his lips together, evidently trying not to laugh.“You don’t decorate your house, do you?” Potter asks, in the tone of someone presenting a winning hand.“Touché.”





	Decoration

**Author's Note:**

> Had a request for Snarry at the holidays, so!

For a long moment, Severus stands in the corridor, frowning slightly. From Potter’s kitchen, further down the corridor, comes the scent of onions and vegetables frying on the hob, as well as the salted smell of bacon roasting in a tin, and Severus takes just a second to confirm to himself, and glances at the date upon his watch - a gift from Lucius when he had turned 17, and one that has been kept in perfect condition since he had received it.

The date is the twenty-third of December.

“Potter?” Severus calls down the hall.

“I’m not going to receive you at the door, Severus, you’ve been here about five hundred times,” comes the retort from the kitchen, and Severus lets his lips twitch into a slight smile. It’s a fleeting expression, but one that makes him feel the slightest twinge of warmth, despite the winter freeze outside. “Just come in.”

“No, Potter, that isn’t why I called you,” he replies, and he schools his expression into one of neutrality as he steps into the kitchen, glancing toward the hob. Merrily sizzling away in the frying pan is a medley of vegetables, their colours brightly contrasting one another, and when Severus leans slightly back to look through the oven’s steamy window, he sees a potato gratin on the lower shelf, and on the upper shelf–

“Lamb chops,” Potter supplies from the sink, and Severus takes a slow step closer, so that his chest is against the younger man’s back. In the kitchen window, which overlooks an incredibly disordered, but well-loved herb garden, he sees Potter smile. He can smell the washing up liquid as Potter sets the last of the plates on the drying rack, but he can also smell Potter himself, that wonderful mix of broom polish and leather… 

“You haven’t any decorations,” Severus says, and he allows himself the privilege of leaning forward just slightly, so that their torsos touch together, that he might settle the sharp bone of his chin on the thick material of Potter’s knitted jumper. One of Molly Weasley’s, Severus would wager - the man has enough of them. Potter’s slight smile gives way, his eyes losing some of their shine, and then he shrugs, leaning back against Severus’ chest.

“Oh, that,” Potter says, unenthused. “Well, I just don’t. You know, it’s not like I have anybody over here at Christmas - we all go to the Weasleys’. You go to the Malfoys’, right?”

“Not of my own volition.” Potter presses his lips together, evidently trying not to laugh. 

“You don’t decorate  _your_ house, do you?” Potter asks, in the tone of someone presenting a winning hand. 

“Touché.” 

“You hungry?” Potter asks.

“I am here for dinner, am I not? Were I not hungry, I would have stayed home.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Potter retorts. “You’ve grown too accustomed to my charm and rapier wit.”

“Have I, indeed? And where might you be storing those attributes? I presume they’re on a shelf somewhere.”

“ _Ouch_ , critical strike, right in the self esteem,” Potter says in the exaggerated voice of a Quidditch announcer, and Severus watches him as he flicks off the oven, taking up an oven glove and leaning in to remove the two trays. The smell is delightful, and Severus leans back against the kitchen counter, watching him as he shifts the vegetables in the frying pan, pouring in a liberal amount of a sweet sauce Severus vaguely recognizes as Japanese in origin. In a voice desperately formulated to be casual, and not quite reaching the measure, he says, “Are you, um. Are you going to the Malfoys tomorrow?”

“I suppose,” Severus says. “Lucius ordinarily arrives on my doorstep at one o’clock, gives me a gift, and insists I accompany him back to open it.”

“Oh, right,” Potter says. Severus looks at the line of his muscled back as he arranges the vegetables on a plate, beside a serving of the gratin and two of the lamb chops. The plates are obsessively aligned, each of them perfectly matching the other, and with no teriyaki sauce dripping at the edge of the plate, no piece of the meal out of place. Some habits don’t leave you, no matter how many years behind you their birth might be. 

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason, just wondering.”

“I see.” A beat passes, and Severus asks, “Will you be spending your Christmas with the Weasleys?”

“Yes,” Potter says. “I suppose.”

“I thought you might be hoping for some alternative.”

“Well. I thought maybe we could– You know, we don’t have to stay in the house. We could go out somewhere, to lunch, I mean, London, there’ll be plenty of places open.” 

“Traditionally,” Severus says, in a tone of great delicacy, “one spends one’s Christmas day with one’s loved ones.”

“Then why are you spending yours with the Malfoys?” Potter demands, and he is so abruptly angry that the plate clatters slightly where he lays it on the table, making him flinch. Severus watches him closely, unmoving in his place.

Severus answers, in a tone of some humour, “Try as I might, Potter, Lucius and Narcissa insist on  _loving_ me.” He puts as much sardonic ire as he might on the last word, but Potter doesn’t smile. Instead, an expression of consternation furrows his dark brow and makes his lips frown, and Severus see his premature wrinkles deepen on his forehead and around his mouth.

“Do they.” It barely sounds like a question, and Severus feels on uncertain ground.

“They do.”

“Well, then,” Potter says. “I insist.” A sickly feeling makes itself known in the base of Severus’ stomach, and he is slow about sitting down at the table, across from Potter. 

“No,” Severus says. “I don’t think so, Potter.”

“You can call me Harry, you know. We’ve only had sex a hundred times, we’ve only slept beside each other–”

“You don’t usually sleep,” Severus points out. Potter laughs, and the sound is bitter, and ugly. Severus catches himself laughing like that sometimes.

“Nor do you. Why is it, do you suppose, that we have that in common?” Potter stares at him, desperately, from across the table, and then says, “Why can’t you just– Just let me in, okay? Just  _believe_  me, when I say that I give a monkey’s whether you live or die, and believe me when I say that I want you to stay, and spend Christmas with me.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Severus feels bile embitter the back of his tongue, and he feels the instinct he always does in these situations, backed into the corner by Potter’s all-encompassing feelings, to lash out, to scramble from the room, but he controls the urge and swallows it down. 

Looking very intently at his own plate instead of Potter, he says, “It may behoove you to know, Potter, that despite the discomfort I display in wearing my emotions upon my sleeves, those emotions remain nonetheless. Regardless of whatever feeling you might have for them, I have spent every Christmas with the Malfoys since I was seventeen years old, barring those that fell during the war, and it is a habit to which I am accustomed.” Potter frowns for a second.

“Even the year Lucius was In Azkaban?” he asks, and Severus hesitates for a moment before he inclines his head. 

 _Why should he pry into your private affairs?_  asks a nasty voice that rings in his head, and reminds him of the voice of his father. 

 _He is a private affair_ , the more reasonable part of Severus’ fractured psyche reasons, and Severus allows himself to exhale.

“Oh,” Potter says. 

“I–” Severus clears his throat slightly, and then says, “I care very deeply for Lucius and Narcissa.” Potter stares at him, shame visible in his expression, and Severus sees the curl of his shoulders and wishes he would not be quite so plain in the pain he feels, wishes he would hide it better.

“Oh,” he says again. 

“And,” Severus adds, uncomfortable with the way he stumbles over the words, uncomfortable with his lacking practice in the arena,  _uncomfortable_  through and through, “I do not think it– I do not believe I am remiss in saying that I believe the Weasleys might feel your absence quite keenly, were you to spend Christmas elsewhere.” Potter stares down at his plate, and Severus can feel the anxiety burning in his veins, seeming to bubble from his very blood as he says, rather more quietly than he intends to, “Of course, I am only contractually obligated to join the Malfoys for gift-giving, and for lunch. My evening, I ordinarily spend alone, but I could perhaps be convinced, maybe in exchange for some sort of monetary gain, or with sexual favour, to collect you from the Weasley home, that we might go out for dinner together to a restaurant in Muggle London.”

The change that comes across Potter’s demeanour is extremely slow. 

First, Severus sees his head tilt slightly as he seems to digest what it is Severus says, and then his face slowly rises. His gaze settles once more on Severus’ face, but this time his green eyes show unadulterated wonder instead of shame or disgust, and then he smiles. It is, despite the wrinkles and the bags under his eyes, a beautiful smile. It imparts upon Severus the same warm sensation of sunlight on his bare skin. 

“Oh,” he says softly.

“Is that  _all_  you can say?”

“No,” Potter says, grinning like a madman. “I suppose I can say  _alright, let’s do that._  And, um– We could, you know, we could go… Go somewhere…”

“Your food is getting cold.”

“Yours too.”

“Yes, well. We might eat it, perhaps.”

“Maybe.” 

Severus picks up his fork.

“You’ll, um. You’ll have to call me Harry, you know. If you pick me up from the Weasleys.”

“Then you can pick  _me_  up.”

“They’ll think I’m coming to do a sweep for dark magical objects.” Severus allows himself a slight smirk.

“Yes, Auror Potter. I suppose they will.”

“You’re horrible.”

“May I eat my meal now?”

“Yes, Severus, you may.”

                                                  —

Later on, Potter doesn’t even try to get Severus’ clothes off before he clambers on top of him, presses him back in the armchair. Severus feels Potter’s nose against his own, and he looks at Potter’s tight-closed eyes, feels Potter’s fingers slide slowly against the sides of Severus’ jaw, avoiding the sides of his neck. 

“You’re too heavy for this,” Severus grouses. 

“Shut up,” Potter says, and he kisses Severus with a desperation that gives Severus pause, makes him ache as he kisses the younger man back, lets his fingers rest on the panel of Potter’s lower back, the jut of his hips. He presses their cheeks together, then, presses his cheek to Severus’ and clutches his bare cheek with his palm.

“Potter,” Severus murmurs, “why haven’t you put up any Christmas decorations?”

“Every year I think of buying a book on how to do it,” Potter whispers. “I’ve seen the spells people use, for– For baubles and for tinsel, for preserving the holly they pick. I know there are books, I know… I’m sure Hermione’s got dozens. But every time, it just feels like… Like a book is  _stupid_ , you know. They’re the sort of spells you’re meant to learn from your family, and Molly does all the decoration in the Weasley family, and I mentioned it once and she just sort of laughed and brushed me off and said something vague about when I had kids… I was, I was twenty at the time, you know, she thought… She thought I still would. You’re not meant to learn it from a book, and I just think, I wonder what spells they… Because I looked, you know, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t find any photos from Christmas, and I…”

A warm wetness drops down onto Severus’ cheek, and slides down his neck. 

Severus’ grip tightens on Potter’s lower back.

“I’m sorry,” Potter mutters. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve just– I’m sorry–”

“Stop repeating yourself,” Severus says. “You sound like a broken record.” Potter sniffles, the sound resoundingly ugly, and Severus considers reaching for his handkerchief, but it would mean removing his hands from Potter’s back, something he has no desire to do, as of this moment. 

“I’ve never told anybody that before,” Potter murmurs, clutching at Severus tightly. “I guess it sounds stupid, and sentimental.”

“Yes,” Severus says, and then inwardly winces when he feels Potter stiffen. “It isn’t stupid, Potter,” he murmurs, and he slides his hands up Potter’s back, rubbing two straight lines up toward his shoulders before bringing them down again. “It isn’t.”

Potter leans back, and Severus looks at his expression, which has been carefully formed into something like neutrality. Potter’s breaths are unnaturally slow as he does his best to control his emotions, and Severus slowly reaches up, brushing his thumb over a tear lingering on his cheek. Potter swallows.

“Sorry,” he says again.

 _I could teach you_ , Severus wants to say, but he isn’t sure if that’s the right thing to do - he lacks the script for this sort of situation, and his skin feels too tight, his heart beating a little faster than it ought.

“You don’t need decorations,” Severus says, in what he hopes is a tender tone. “We’re going elsewhere.”

“Can we go to bed?”

“It isn’t even nine.”

“We’re adults, aren’t we? We can go to bed when we want.” Potter presses his cheek against Severus’ palm, and Severus feels as if he holds something incredibly precious, something beautiful beyond anything he deserves to lay his blood-stained hands on… 

“I suppose we are,” Severus says, and he holds his breath for a long moment before he forces, “Harry,” from his throat.

Potter’s eyes open, brightly green in the low light, beautiful–

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and then he sinks forward again, pressing their cheeks together, his weight heavy on Severus’ chest.

After a moment, Severus points out, “We don’t appear to be moving.”

“Shut up,” Potter replies, and Severus smiles against his neck. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html), which I'm making my focus rather than Tumblr in the wake of all this anti-adult content nonsense. Requests always open.


End file.
